"Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stated, is that, owing to bad management, lack of foresight, and the almost complete breakdown of the commissary and medical departments of the army, our soldiers in Cuba suffered greater hardships and privations, in certain ways, than were ever before endured by an American army in the field. They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half cared for when ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... without saying that this sort of climate would suit any one in ordinary health, inviting and stimulating to constant out-of-door exercise, and that it would be equally favorable to that general breakdown of the system which has the name of nervous prostration. The effect upon diseases of the respiratory organs can only be determined by individual experience. The government has lately been sending soldiers who have ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... whether they weary him or not. It is as much his living to finish reading a book as it is mine to finish writing a book. Twice lately I have got ignominiously "stuck" in novels, and in each case I particularly regretted the sad breakdown. Gabriele d'Annunzio's "Forse che si forse che no" has been my undoing. I began it in the French version by Donatella Cross (Calmann-Levy, 3 fr. 50), and I began it with joy and hope. The translation, by the way, is very good. Whatever mountebank tricks d'Annunzio ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... By reason of the experience gained at this station through the use of these crude plug-switches, Mr. Edison started a competition among a few of his assistants to devise something better. The result was the invention of a "breakdown" switch by Mr. W. S. Andrews, which was accepted by Mr. Edison as the best of the devices suggested, and was developed and used for a great ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... France the one main thing actually touching the lives of the people, after their religion (which the complete breakdown of the anti-clerical threat had secured), was the sale of their principal manufacture. This sale was rendered difficult from a number of reasons, one of which, perhaps not the chief, but the most apparent and the most easily remediable, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... he has ruled out a far more plausible explanation of the faults of such a play as Timon of Athens than his theory that Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady "cankered and took on proud flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and madness." In Timon the intellectual bankruptcy is obvious enough: Shakespear tried once too often to make a play out of the cheap pessimism which is thrown into despair by a comparison of actual human nature with theoretical ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... Compton listened with intense excitement; but the hunter treated the whole thing calmly, with set purpose. He had in his experience seen the effect of a terrible shock, in the complete breakdown of the victim, and, personally, he had known one man die from the shock to his system caused exactly by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a lion at night. He kept Venning's thoughts off the mental picture of the charging lion until dawn, when ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... room and came back in a minute dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo—Teutonic version—of a darky breakdown, stopping only to join in the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... disarray I really dare not imagine, dead white at least, shaking like an aspen, and mowing at the man with speechless lips. And this was the soldier of Napoleon, and the gentleman who intended going next night to an Assembly Ball! I am the more particular in telling of my breakdown, because it was my only experience of the sort; and it is a good tale for officers. I will allow no man to call me coward; I have made my proofs; few men more. And yet I (come of the best blood in France and inured to danger from a child) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to conquer or to die, and that if defeated, he would never return to Paris alive. It was evident by their tone that at the time the proclamations were penned it was intended that the battle should take place on that day, and that the delay was consequent upon a breakdown in the arrangements and was not the result of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... informed. The more you do for these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you get your vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where you machine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'll have moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels' taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'd heard from the ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... wages of vice in lowering the wages of women in industry; still another is the constant temptation of shop-girls to imitate their patrons' vulgar displays of finery. But of all the economic factors contributing to the moral breakdown of girls, the most general and inexcusable is the failure of our public schools to provide vocational training, although it is certain that above fifty per cent of all girls leave the schools to become wage-earners. Failure ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... ultimate expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN28] The boy Husayn Geninah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... it appeared, suffered a severe nervous breakdown. The physicians had ordered immediate dropping of ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... towards the end of Spring. The war had been going on ten months when it fell on our ears like a thunderclap that all was not well with us in England. In the ominous unrest that followed there was danger of serious division, with the risk of a breakdown in that national unity without which there could be no true strength. The result was a Coalition Government, uniting all the parties save one, followed by an appeal to the patriotism of the ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... at last they found the motor pool. And there were three groundcars, all in various stages of breakdown or dismantlement. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Portuguese were nearly successful, but their over impetuosity caused all the scaling ladders to be broken by the crowds of soldiers who tried to mount them at once. Only a small party managed to enter the town, and since they could not be supported owing to the breakdown of the ladders, they were almost entirely cut to pieces. Several officers were killed in this affair, amongst whom were Jorge da Silveira and Garcia de Sousa, who both distinguished themselves by their daring ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... With the breakdown of his enterprise, John Fitch went forth penniless into the world. The patent which he received from the United States in 1791, was of small use. How little can a pauper avail himself of a privilege! Presently ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... worst breakdown on the morning of Commemoration Day she would still have received him as her lover and, after a little friendly lecture which would, of course, have ended in the usual way, she would have been perfect friends with him ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the celebrated literary moralist, was born at Ecclefechan, Scotland, Dec. 4, 1795. He was educated at the village school and at the Annan Grammar School, proceeding to Edinburgh University in 1809. The breakdown of his dogmatic beliefs made it impossible for him to enter the clerical profession, and neither school-teaching nor the study of law attracted him. Supporting himself by private teaching, Carlyle made the beginnings of a literary connection. He fought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the night Prescott awoke, stiff, nauseated, hungry and parched with tormenting thirst. Though he did not know it at that moment, the train had halted because of a breakdown ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... misunderstand it. He must have felt certain that the fair figure of "Don Jorge," created in "The Bible of Spain," had been poisoned for most readers by many a passage in "Lavengro," like that where he doubted the existence of self and sky and stars, or where he told of the breakdown in his health when he was sixteen and of the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... ourselves and one another. This time our suspense was comparatively short-lived. Word came that John was in hospital again—at the Duke of Westminster's hospital at Le Toquet, in France. This time he was not wounded; he was suffering from dysentery, fever and—a nervous breakdown. That was what staggered his mother and me. A nervous breakdown! We could not reconcile the John we knew with the idea that the words conveyed to us. He had been high strung, to be sure, and sensitive. But never had ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... him, "is stupid enough, today, to want to be a dictator. That ended by the middle of the Twenty-first Century. Everybody knows what happened to Mussolini, and Hitler, and Stalin, and all their imitators. Why, it is as much the public fear of Big Government as the breakdown of civil power because of the administrative handicap of a shortage of Literate administrators that is responsible for the disgraceful lawlessness of the past hundred years. Thus, it speaks well for the public trust in Chester Pelton's known integrity and sincerity ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... contributed to the semi-hysterical condition into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause of his breakdown. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of trade, cannot always be dissected into their component units as readily as railroad companies or similar organizations can be. Their dissolution by ordinary legal process may oftentimes involve financial consequences likely to overwhelm the security market and bring upon it breakdown and confusion. There ought to be an administrative commission capable of directing and shaping such corrective processes, not only in aid of the courts but also by ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... poem, it wears out and goes to pieces all at once. On the other hand, if you are careless or indifferent or lazy you may allow the machine to get out of order or to become rusty from disuse, or perhaps when a nut works loose you neglect it and have a breakdown on the road, or you may forget to oil the bearings and in a short time they begin to squeak and wear. If you are another kind of a boy, you may be careful enough about oiling and cleaning the wheel, but you may also be reckless and head—strong and will jump over curbstones and gutters or ride ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... a week he was able to do this smartly; and had learned, in case of a breakdown, which parts of the mechanism would most probably have given way, and how to replace broken parts by spare ones, carried ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... in abbreviated skirts and low-cut dress, winking and blinking in ironical shyness, and concluding with a flaunting of her gown, a toe pointed ceilingward, and a lively "breakdown." Then she vanished with a hop, skip and a bow, reappeared with a ravishing smile and threw a generous assortment of kisses among the audience, and disappeared with another hop, skip and a bow, as Impecunious Jordan burst upon the spectators from ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... dreamers among the Washo today, in the sense that the term was used in times past. That is, no one is especially singled out as having infallible dreams foretelling certain classes of events. It may be that the breakdown of the band structure, which was related to economic exploitative activity, in effect, forced everyone to dream for himself. In the past, dreamers were particularly important in setting the time and place for activities ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... of European imperialism was filled with the rivalries of the three nations which had in different degrees contributed to the breakdown of the Spanish monopoly, the Dutch, the French, and the English; and we have next to inquire how far, and why, these peoples were more successful than the Spaniards in planting in the non-European world the essentials of European civilisation. The ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... have acted convincingly, because each knew to a nicety how soon a gallon of petrol would vaporize in the Du Vallon's six cylinders. Having taken the precaution to measure that exact quantity into the tank before leaving Cheddar, they were prepared for a breakdown at any point within a few hundred yards of the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... and heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger's hand, for comfort in their wretchedness and weakness. Yet on the whole they have shown amazing courage, and, after their tears, have laughed at their own breakdown, and, always children of France, have been superb, so that again and again I have wondered at the gallantry with which they endured this horror. Young boys have revealed the heroic strain in them and have played the part of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... players may move forward after once landing on the backs. If all of the bungs succeed in seating themselves without any break occurring among the buckets, it counts one in favor of the buckets. When such a breakdown occurs, the two parties change places, the bungs taking the place of the buckets; otherwise the game is repeated with the same bungs and buckets. The party wins which has the highest score to ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... to us and begged like frightened children to be taken; but we dared not risk a breakdown and had to refuse. But never shall I forget the look ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of that. Unfortunately, Mrs. Rivers had a very convenient breakdown, when she heard the news; she is now in a hospital in New York, and won't be back until after the funeral. Prostrated with grief. Or something. And this case is due to blow up like Hiroshima before then. Well, we can't get fees from everybody." ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... to emancipate himself from the hand that pressed like a weight upon him. Even before this time he had observed a little discrepancy between his father's words and deeds, between his wide liberal theories and his harsh petty despotism; but he had not expected such a complete breakdown. His confirmed egoism was patent now in everything. Young Lavretsky was getting ready! to go to Moscow, to prepare for the university, when a new unexpected calamity overtook Ivan Petrovitch; he became blind, and ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... have got it all out almost at a breath, without a sign of a breakdown; and the eyes of Grannie Amber, who was not meant to understand and knew better than to show she did, kindled at her ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... father fell into financial difficulties. He was faced with bankruptcy. Cunningham not only refused to help him, but was the hardest of his creditors. He hounded him to the time of my father's death a few months later. His death was due to a breakdown caused by intense worry." ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... when I've had a little rest, I'll come after you in a carriage, in time to bring you home. That will save Nick motoring here and back, and give him a chance to keep his engagement at six, with those men, and no danger of a breakdown with his car. He might burst a tire on that stony road, you see, and be delayed. Those men are ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... brought back the smelling-salts and was most eagerly solicitous that Nina should conquer this passing attack of hysteria, as she deemed it. And, indeed, Nina managed to get through the rest of her part without any serious breakdown, to Estelle's ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... outright, and an emphatic: "Wife determined, coming Tuesday's train," from the Maluka was followed by a complete breakdown ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Badington's house, perhaps they would give me shelter for the night; at least, I hope they would, and if they would not, well, it doesn't really matter, and we can go and stop at the hotel at Sandwich. It would have to be a real breakdown, for Lord Badington keeps motor-cars of his own, and his drivers would be sure to be ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... to move on as before, while the dead man slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a portion of his income compelled him to remain in Dresden continuously. This proved really a stroke of good fortune. Glasenapp, basing ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the permanent headquarters of "the bunch," and most any time of day or night you could hear jazz tunes comin' from there, or see two or three cars parked outside. And, although the cotton market was doing flip-flops about that time I don't see any signs of nervous breakdown about Stanley. In fact, he seems to have bucked ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... breakdown," was the reply of the German. "And it looks to me as if some one had been tampering with ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... that it is the law of the universe that what is good will endure. But here we have not merely a contravention of that law, but an utter and everlasting breakdown of the divine administration. In a universe where God rules in wisdom, in righteousness, and in love; and where moreover He is possessed of all power, not only physical but moral, it seems almost blasphemy to ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... they shouted again, but though several times they did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions ended soon in an utter breakdown-into a hoarse squeak on Jock's part and a weak, hungry cry on Armine's. Jock's face was covered with tears, as much from ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... talked clumsily about himself most of the time. There was a lump in his throat. He felt all the while that tragedy was very near. By degrees, though, as she ate and drank, the color came back to her cheeks, the fear of a breakdown seemed to pass away. She became ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again, when, after two hours, the Wonder was still close behind them. "Our only chance is that they may have a breakdown." ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... the breakdown of the central government, most regions have reverted to local forms of conflict resolution, either secular, traditional clan-based arbitration, or Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision for appeal ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... free a second later, and Isabel, divining that any further demonstration from her would cause a breakdown, bade her a loving good ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... of October, 1828, he began to show signs of a serious breakdown. He was living at the home of his brother Ferdinand, in one of the suburbs of the city. Although he revived a little during the early part of November, so that he could resume walks in the neighborhood, the weakness increased, and eleven days passed without food or drink. Lingering till ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... restrain this passion. The supplies for the brain and nervous system are absorbed, and the seed diverted through sexual excesses in the marriage relationship, by fornication, or by any other form of immorality, the man's power must decline: that to this very cause may be attributed the failure and breakdown of so ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... great change in me. I could now eat and sleep like a hired man, and it seemed preposterous to claim that I was going to the country for my health. My medical adviser, however, insisted that I had not gotten far enough away from the cause of my breakdown, and that it would be unwise for me to take up work again for at least another year. In my own mind there was a fixed opinion that I should never take it up again. I loved it dearly; but I had given long, hard service to it, and felt that I had earned the right to freedom from its exacting demands. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... to a Russian, the Countess Sergius, learning of the presence of the two American Red Cross nurses in the Russian hospital, called at once to see if she could do anything for their comfort. Discovering Nona ill and Barbara on the verge of a breakdown, the American woman insisted that the girls be her guests. They were not able to be of special assistance at the hospital under the present circumstances, while a week or so of rest and change might do ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... arrogance it had seemed at first a simple matter to do away with Gray. That had been mistake number one. The miserable breakdown of that plan, the refusal of his hireling to go forward, and the impossibility of securing a trustworthy substitute convinced him finally that he had erred grievously in his method. Some men are invulnerable to open attack, and Gray, it seemed, had been ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... overworked and underappreciated, like our modern railmen, the drivers of the stage. These, as the ancient Jehu, were compelled to drive furiously on occasion, in order to keep a cramped schedule or make up for the loss of time brought about by a breakdown, a washout, or some Indian depredation. Few drivers there were who did not love their work. It came to be a saying, "Once a driver, always a driver." The coach-and-four, or more, with booted and belted ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... off and raided the Huns for the third time that night. All that were left of this weary group of aviators returned from this third raid in broad daylight, with nerves strained to the verge of a breakdown; some were in tears, some striving to be gay, and some were very quiet, but all were happy in knowing that they had "done ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... does not require many days, nay, many hours, to discover the subtlety of the enemy of souls. For some time my nerves, never too strong, were so wrought upon that I was under a constant strain, and more than once, fearing a breakdown, felt that I should be compelled to ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... the house of Wormser was shaken. It wasn't a serious breakdown, but among the good things that had to be thrown overboard belonged—at the demand of the helping ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... he saw her last. When he went away from her to fulfil his sentence, he had felt that identity with her a man must recognise for a wife passionately beloved. He had left her in a state of nervous collapse, an ignoble, querulous breakdown, due, he had to explain to himself, to her nature, delicately strung. There was nothing heroic about the way she had taken his downfall. But the exquisite music of her, he further tutored himself, was not set to martial strains. She was the loveliness of the twilight, of the evening ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in Borrow's highly nervous excitable nature, if not the cause of his wife's breakdown, at least an obstacle to her recovery, and was of opinion that Mrs Borrow's disorder had been greatly aggravated by ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, pinioning him. The suit case was rudely wrenched ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... Bench Prison, plus a fine of L100. Then came a quarrel with an old friend, Wilkes—not the least vexatious result of that forlorn championship of Bute's government in The Briton. And finally, in part, obviously, as a consequence of all this nervous breakdown, a succession of severe catarrhs, premonitory in his case of consumption, the serious illness of the wife he adored, and the death of his darling, the "little Boss" of former years, now on the verge of womanhood. To a man of his extraordinarily strong affections such a series of ills was too overwhelming. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... ahead of Coutlass and his gang, whose shoes, among other matters, pinched them; and we were comfortably quartered in the one hotel several hours before the arrival of Lady Saffren Waldon and those folk who elected to wait for the breakdown ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... early days, and the first six centuries of Anvharian history were more speculation than fact. The Breakdown occurred about that time, and in the galaxy-wide disruption Anvhar had to fight its own internal battle. When the Earth Empire collapsed it was the end of more than an era. Many of the observation stations found themselves representing institutions that no longer existed. The professional hunters ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... after the guests have left the banquet indicate her wisdom in dealing with him, or the pathetic weakening of her strong character, or a natural tenderness? Give reasons. What makes the sleep-walking scene so pathetic? How has the dramatist prepared us for her breakdown? What, if anything, do you find in ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... the mutual benefit of honour among blackmailers. Therefore, at eight it is no longer the ticket to threaten to tell the teacher; and, a little later, threatening to tell any adult at all is considered something of a breakdown in morals. Notoriously, the code is more liable to infraction by people of the physically weaker sex, for the very reason, of course, that their inferiority of muscle so frequently compels such a sin, if ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... carried into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... civilization with its division of labour, the various functions of mind and body are very unequally exercised. There is overwork or misuse of one part and disuse and neglect of others, leading to the partial breakdown or degeneration of various organs and to general deterioration of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness and weakness, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had (p. 104) only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some 15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J day and included many of those drafted ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... hurriedly; "with care, and under favourable circumstances, there might be no further breakdown for another year; but"—with a keen look at his patient—"I will ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... asking for it, wasn't he?" answered Yeager in a matter-of-fact voice. He did not intend by an expression of sympathy to aid in any breakdown here. That could come later when they had put many miles ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... districts in the Kentucky mountains reveal dialects with some important differences in vocabulary and construction. These are shown most strikingly in some of the ballads of that region which have been collected by William Aspinwall Bradley, and by Howard Brockway. Rural schools and the breakdown of complete isolation will probably ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... general has never suspected the nephew. Only two people suspect him: the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his father. This gentleman puts a detective on the trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the second case of the thing I have argued as being generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of a private person, and which the considerations of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics—all that men and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... completely forgotten to eat candy for fifteen minutes. "But we can't go on like that forever. When it comes right down to us and we lose somebody we care for—" her voice broke and the girls went on knitting faster than ever, fearing a general breakdown. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... happiness was centred. The suddenness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife's inconsolable grief, brought him perilously near a complete breakdown. But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave the mother some comfort; and as the result of a friendly conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself was carried off for a week's climbing in Wales between Christmas ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... capable one, I fancy,' said Marcella. 'We had nearly an hour's talk before you came. But she won't be able to stand the work. There'll be another breakdown before long.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the War was the complete breakdown of international socialism. Not only socialists, but those of us who had been thoughtfully watching the movement from without, had come to believe that the measure of consciousness of international brotherhood it had developed ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... it's all rot! Do you think I believe for one instant—" He broke off. "And so's a nervous breakdown all rot, isn't it, and D.T.? They aren't real ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... out into the country she came at last. Across the fence and field, along the old trail once trodden by a boy's bitter agony, now stumbled a white-faced girl, sick at heart. She sat on a log and began to sob in spite of her efforts at self-control. At first it was physical breakdown, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... the diary: "Rested at home. Very glad to be there." The attempt was not attended by any lasting bad effects; he immediately regained his appetite and usual health; but his Aunt Susan was sorely disappointed. He tried to soothe her by explaining what he believed to be the combined causes of his breakdown: first the intense heat, which had made his stay in Paris very trying; the fatigue he had undergone there; and lastly the weakness supervening after the loss of appetite, also due to the abnormal heat, which was causing several ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... if I like the accommodations," was the reply. "I am in need of perfect quiet. My doctor says I must court tranquility to avoid a nervous breakdown. I do not know your town; I do not know your hotel; I hired a man in the city to drive me until I came to a quiet place. He assured me, on the way, that this is a ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... perfectly horrible idea! Why, she isn't born yet!' 'No,' said the young man, 'but I have my eye on her mother.' At this, Brett, who was holding a light for his master's cigarette, turned away convulsively, with a sudden dip of the head, and vanished from the room. His breakdown touched and pleased all four beholders. But—was it a genuine lapse? Or merely a feint to thrill us?—the feint of an equilibrist so secure that he can pretend to lose ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the road, a hundred paces from the place of our breakdown, a cliff of soft stone, the foot of which was quarried in several places. We resolved to wait in one of those caves, warming ourselves until the return of the boy sent to Tournus. The second boy tied the three remaining horses to the trunk of a tree, near our cavern. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... the Negroes had a "breakdown," often dancing all night long. About twelve o'clock they had a big supper, everybody bringing a box of all kinds of good things to eat, and putting it on a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... qualifications of his secretaries were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his sight he had become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of his ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... herself—already, as the sequel showed, mortally ill, worn out by remorse and sleeplessness, and quivering under the insult which had been offered her. Lady Wing recovered her own self-possession under the stimulus of Juliet's breakdown. She taunted her in the cruelest way, accused her of being the temptress in the case of Sir Francis, and of simulating a hypocritical indignation in order to save herself with her husband, and finally charged her with the robbery of her sister's money, declaring that as ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a most doleful breakdown. The philanthropist deranged the symmetry of the table, sat himself in the way of the waiting, blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates and dishes on, over his own head. Nobody could talk to anybody, because ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... painfully acquired knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... exhilaration of the victorious; but John sat almost silent, and, in spite of their liveliness, the others eyed him a little anxiously now and then, knowing that he had been living on excitement through a physically exhausting day, and they were fearful lest his nerves react and bring him to a breakdown. But the healthy flush of his cheek was reassuring; he looked steady and strong, and they were pleased to believe that the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... think profitably on that first question in these very informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Bell replied. "Heritage is an exceedingly clever fellow who has not yet recovered from a bad breakdown some years ago. I had nearly cured him at one time, but he seems to have lapsed into bad ways again. Some day, when I have time, I shall take ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... lofty peaks to yawning chasms below, hearing the crack of the long-lashed whip urging the noble steeds to faster speed, turning the rough, ragged, serpent-shaped drive, thundering through clouds and mist with lightning rapidity, and always in constant terror of a breakdown or error on the part of the fearless driver, gave one a sensation that would nearly make his hair stand on end. During the descent a slight error on the part of the horses or driver, would have hurled all to a horrible death; but those mountain drivers, strapped to their ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Persian slippers. In another, the chorus is composed of men representing wasps, with waists pinched in, bodies striped with black and yellow, and long stings behind. The piece ends with three boys disguised as crabs, dancing a furious breakdown, while the chorus encourages them with, "Come now, let us all make room for them, that they may twirl themselves about. Come, oh famous offsprings of your briny father!—skip along the sandy shore of the barren sea, ye ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... extent—provided that time should be given them, and provided also the settlement of their affairs should be left in their own hands. An extensive and varied country business like theirs might be carried on through years of ill-success without an utter breakdown, and years of care and labour would be required, if the sacrifice of much valuable property was to be avoided, and this care and labour he saw must fall on him. He could no longer hope for a partnership ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our Wohnung, and ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... that the sparkle in his eyes either meant some mischievous design, or a strong desire to "make music." But this evening he was long in coming to the point. He began by pelting the Tenor with roses through the window, and then he entered and danced an impromptu breakdown in the middle of the room; but these preliminaries might have been an introduction to anything, and it seemed as if his programme were not complete, for he next subsided into his accustomed seat on the sofa up against the wall opposite the fireplace, and remained there, with ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... seem that the addition of this last demand, namely, of satisfying the sexual desires of the husband during the period of pregnancy, might prove "the straw that breaks the camel's back," and result in the more or less complete nervous breakdown of the woman. The author submits this question to all fair-minded men: Is it not due to the wife that she be not asked to satisfy the recurring sexual desires of the husband during the period when her life and its energies are so sacred to the ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... could I hold back? I was certainly growing stronger every hour, and in spite of my breakdown on the previous night, I felt that it would be absurd to pretend that I was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... impose interpretations and justifications upon our situation. We all three became divided between our partial attention to one another and our urgent necessity to keep hold of our points of view. That I think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts, that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an issue to heat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know if indeed we raised our voices, but my memory has an effect of raised voices, and when at last I went out of the house it seemed to me that the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the house is forty," Ford told him; "the name on the door-plate, Dr. Prothero. Find out everything you can about him without letting any one catch you at it. Better begin at the nearest chemist's. Say you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and ask the man to mix you a sedative, and recommend a physician. Show him Prothero's name and address on a piece of paper, and say Prothero has been recommended to you as a specialist on nervous troubles. Ask what he thinks of him. Get him to talk. Then visit the trades-people ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... has gone as a tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened measure. The sing of I sing is the correspondent of the Anglo-Saxon singe; the infinitive sing, of singan; the imperative sing of sing. Ever since the breakdown of English forms that set in about the time of the Norman Conquest, our language has been straining towards the creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but it has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs and other elements of that sort. Were the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned 'walk-round' and 'negro breakdown', in which all would participate, would be the inevitable result. At other times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars and under 'Bonny Bell window panes' — ah, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... The apparent breakdown of the doctrine of barriers is slightly touched on in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 365, vi. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... a stuffy room, lack of exercise, or what-not, which can be promptly relieved by removing the cause; or whether we have to deal with the first symptoms of a dangerous fever, the beginning of a nervous breakdown, or an early warning of some grave trouble in kidneys, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon chapel was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed him what had happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help watching him during chapel; and afterwards, on that evening, acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of Blake, there was ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mentioned most people begin trying to prove an alibi. The man who is nervous and knows that he is nervous, realizes that he needs help, but the man who has as yet felt no lack of stability in himself is quite likely to be impatient with that whole class of people who are liable to nervous breakdown. It is therefore well to remind ourselves at once that the line between the so-called "normal" and the nervous is an exceedingly fine one. "Nervous invalids and well people are indistinguishable both in theory and in ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the line the Emperor is about to travel over is ordered. Tunnels, bridges, points, railway crossings, are all subjected to examination, and spare engines kept in immediate readiness in case of a breakdown occurring to the imperial train. The police of the various towns through which the monarch is to pass are also communicated with and their help requisitioned in taking precautions for his safety. Like any private person, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... forced the floe downward. The lead ahead had opened out during the night, cracked the pack from north to south and frozen over again, adding 300 yds. to the distance between the ship and "Khyber Pass." The breakdown gang had completed its work by lunch-time. The gale was then decreasing and the three- days-old moon showed as a red crescent on the northern horizon. The temperature during the blizzard had ranged from -21 to -33.5 Fahr. It is usual for the temperature to rise ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... constantly working at high pressure. In order that these might be carried out efficiently, the whole apparatus had to be carried down to the Hut. Here, Bickerton and Correll were continually in consultation with the meteorologist on the latest breakdown. Cups were blown off several times, and one was lost and replaced with difficulty. Most aggravating of all was a habit the clocks developed of stopping during the colder spells. The old-fashioned method of boiling them was found of assistance, but it was discovered that the best treatment was to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... take any more violent or irregular plunges, you may very greatly shorten your time. Should you insist on remaining in your regiment and doing your work, you have, I fancy, about two years more before a complete breakdown. You are a very strong man, and your lung-tissue is tough. Should you remain here under my care, you will live indefinitely, but I can hold out no hope of an ultimate recovery. If you return to England as an invalid, you will most undoubtedly kill yourself from ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Paul, I think we need never speak about this again; only remember you are not to be sorry. You have not done wrong; you have been very, very kind; and if I see you looking grieved I don't know what I might do;—I might breakdown, you know.' I think she was on the point of doing so then, but the dark storm came dashing down, and the thunder-cloud broke right above the house, as it seemed. Her mother, roused from sleep, called out for ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... let me have my head. You can't imagine how awfully good it tastes when you've been doing your best to choke girls off it for a year or two. It's one of the outward and visible signs of emancipation. This is another!" and she sprang up the high turf bank of the orchard of La Tour and danced a breakdown on it, and then jumped back into the road with ballooning skirts, to the intense amazement of old Mrs. Hamon of Le Fort, who had just come round the corner to draw sweet water from the La ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... afternoon of the opening ceremony the Countess's carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge. Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his best clothes, drove up behind his mule. Fifth, that Denry drove right past the breakdown, apparently not noticing it. Sixth, that Jock, touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of course, while on duty a footman must be ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the three guardian angels of the fast men being come again they get up and dance each one a breakdown which seems to establish their lovers (now at last in the secret of the generous ruse played upon them) firmly in their resolution to lead a better life. They are in nowise shaken from it by the displeasure which soon shows itself in the manner of the first and second ladies. The former ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... and historians of four early centuries, from the fifth to the ninth, as I lived with them, seemed to throw a partial, but yet a searching, light. I have expressed it in Robert Elsmere. Langham and Robert, talking in the Squire's library on Robert's plans for a history of Gaul during the breakdown of the Empire and the emergence of modern France, come to the vital question: "History depends on testimony. What is the nature and virtue of testimony at given times? In other words, did the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a few minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... down," "something has snapped"—these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that "correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which throws it out of correspondence with some necessary part of the environment. Death is the result produced, the want of correspondence. We do not say that this is all that is involved. But this is the root idea of Death—Failure to adjust internal relations to external relations, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... been working up to the limit for years," Mason remarked, "and he's not a particularly strong chap. I should say that he was about due for a nervous breakdown." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... outlet is not afforded for such grievances, so long must unconstitutional means be appealed to; but the question which the breakdown of the old regime suggests seriously to all thinkers is whether there are not ample means within the Constitution, and I think it is the universal opinion of the more moderate that there is; and it is ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... either after the Reformation, when it ought to have prevailed, nor after the Revolution, when it ought not. The failure to establish the Protestant Church on the ruins of the old regime, to which Quinet attributes the breakdown of the Revolution, and which Napoleon regretted almost in the era of his concordat, is explained by Mr. Flint on the ground that Protestants were in a minority. But so they were in and after the wars of religion; and it is not apparent why a philosopher ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... behind a counter and sold tobacco to the most respected residents of Putney. All his ideas were connected either with tobacco or with Putney. A murder in the Strand to that tobacconist was less than the breakdown of a motor bus opposite Putney Station; and a change of government less than a change of programme at the Putney Empire. A rather pessimistic tobacconist, not inclined to believe in a First Cause, until one day a drunken man smashed Salmon and Gluckstein's ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... this great actor hissed off the stage. It was a bad breakdown, and there was no mercy. It turned the women's conversation back to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... hide the breakdown, Clare's nerve gave way. She had forced the crisis in order to clear herself, but saw that she could not do so. Dick's statement was convincing; the papers had been stolen while he was in their house, and she had a horrible suspicion that her father was the thief. It came with ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... fall of Warsaw was sympathetically represented as a masterly operation, and the failure of the Germans to envelop and isolate the Russian armies as proof of the breakdown of their strategy. But all retreats in the war, with the exception of the Turks' before Allenby, were similarly described in the appropriate quarters. It was the common characteristic of the victors that they could ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... would have done if she had flown the least signal of distress. He turned to Leila. "I am very much relieved, my dear, to see that your aunt is taking my departure quietly. I was afraid of another breakdown, and I could not have stayed a ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and steam heat cost more for installation, but have many advantages over the furnace. Their chief drawbacks are the space usurped by radiators, lack of ventilation, and the possibility of an occasional breakdown. The ingenuity of the makers, however, is partly overcoming these difficulties, mainly by the device ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... were engaged in a general retirement all along the River Dvina. The Allies then became interested in the Kaiser's probable choice of a line of defense for the winter on the northern section of his Russian front. The breakdown of the German offensive was attributed by the Allies to three things—the increase in the Russian ammunition supply, a German shortage of munitions, and the weakening of the German ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... our colleges for young men I have little to say. The cases I see of breakdown among women between sixteen and nineteen who belong to normal schools or female colleges are out of all proportion larger than the number of like failures among young men of the same ages, and yet, as I have hinted, the arrangements ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... knowledge create, as one case worker puts it, "the sort of home that tends to get itself deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found in records of ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... in a small steamboat on the Savannah River one night. We were tied up till morning along the river bank under the trees of the deep swamp. Twilight and the swamp silence had settled about us. The moon came up. A banjo had been twanging, but the breakdown was done, the shuffling feet quiet. The little cottonboat had become a part of the moonlit silence and the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... time so utterly weak and despairing that I could at any time have lain down and given up all hope. But we got through the winter, and this year my lads have held up wonderfully, and have battled through with hardly one breakdown." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... or sustainedly organised and expressed. His mingled passion and humour (especially the latter) "escape"—make fitful spurts and explosions—in his correspondence. Latterly this reflects his mental breakdown, increasingly in the prose; though only a few years before the end it contains wonderful verse such as the song, "The swallow leaves her nest," which is a link between Blake and Canon Dixon. But ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... after the departure of de Barral's cousin with de Barral's daughter. It was still in the dining- room, very near the time for him to go forth affronting the elements in order to put in another day's work in his country's service. All he could say at the moment in elucidation of this breakdown from his usual placid ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... industry, under proper conditions, could offer no satisfaction to great human instincts, it would be strange indeed when one remembers the long period that man has spent in the agricultural stage of culture. City dwellers in their hunt for stimulation are likely to face either the breakdown of physical vitality or the blunting of their sensibilities. Country joys, on the other hand, cost less in the nervous capital expended to obtain them. The urban worker, in thinking of his hours of ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... impossible at any time," replied Mrs. Burton, "and I shall be only too thankful if he will stay for a while because of poor father. Oh, Katherine, I am afraid this long terrible winter has killed him'" she said, with a quiver of breakdown in her voice. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... handsome man he had developed into a striking personality, released from the bonds of an enforced inactivity and an objectless destiny. By just so much Stafford had altered for the worse. His character was too strong and rigid to allow an absolute breakdown. He still carried himself well; to all intents and purposes, as far as his duty was concerned, he was as hard-working and conscientious as he had ever been, but no strength of will had been able to hinder the change in his face and expression. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... treatment anywhere. He gave me a pass which would further insure my well being, and so, when a boat load of stores was shipped to Head of Elk the first of this week, I came with it. Everything hath gone off well until this breakdown, and I do not regret that, since it hath brought us together. So you see, Peggy, the matter ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... spotless as her instincts and her training desire. It is simply impossible for her, personally, to go over the house daily with rag, duster and dustpan. If she attempts it, as she does sometimes—she overworks, and a breakdown is the result. What, then, is the sensible, the reasonable, the only thing she should do? Sit down and "worry" over her "untidy house"; lament that "the stairs have not been swept since day before yesterday; that the parlor was not dusted this morning; the music-room looks ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... phases, so that she herself began to feel that her practice with Easton had spoilt her hands. His initial grimness she could understand, and partially its breakdown into irritability. But she was puzzled by his laughter. For ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... but every day deep breathing exercises should be employed. "A hundred deep breaths a day" is one physician's recipe for avoiding tuberculosis. A Russian author, who suffered a nervous breakdown, found—after trying many other aids to health without success—that a retired life for several months in the mountains in which simple deep-breathing exercises practised systematically every day formed the central theme, effected a permanent cure. Deep ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... the Federal party, both within and without Connecticut from 1808 to 1815, was quite as much the real cause of their downfall in the state as that coalition between clergy and lawyers described by Dr. Beecher as causing the breakdown of party machinery and its ultimate ruin. Glancing somewhat hastily at some of the most far-reaching acts of the Federalists, we find first the Federal opposition to the embargo that from December 22, 1807, for over a year paralyzed New England commerce. In February, 1809, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... to the above, there is in course of construction still more powerful pumps of 40 in. diameter, which will provide against contingencies, and prevent delay in case of a breakdown such as occurred lately on the Liverpool side of the works. The nature of the rock is the new red sandstone, of a solid and compact character, favorable for tunneling, and yielding only a moderate quantity of water. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... frequently heard, during my boyhood, of a supposed mental breakdown about this period, and had asked my father for a description of it in the letter from which I am quoting. On this subject the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... and rumours of wars. The Afghan disasters and triumphs, the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs, Lord Dalhousie's annexations, threw law reform into the background, and produced a state of mind not very favourable to it. Then came the Mutiny, which in its essence was the breakdown of an old system; the renunciation of an attempt to effect an impossible compromise between the Asiatic and the European view of things, legal, military, and administrative. The effect of the Mutiny on the Statute-book was unmistakable. The ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
